Reorientation

Well we're back! We will plan on a presentation of our trip tonight for those who come to prayer and devotion time. Then the Wednesday before we kick off Discipleship Training for the fall, we hope to have a Wednesday night when you can hear how your church reached others with the presence and power of Christ all summer through mission trips and camps for all ages. We hope to have a great DVD to link to the front page of the website. Our trip was successful in several veins: 1. Prayer. We prayed and were prayed over. Prayer was a deep part of the experience in this trip! Thank you for your prayers! 2. Witness. We witnessed to the theme of God helping us with our sense of identity. In God we become OK with who we are, where we are and what we are. We then tied those to the fruit of the Spirit (Love, joy and peace -- who we are; patience, kindness and charity -- being OK with where we are; and finally faithfulness, gentleness and self-control = being OK with what we are). The message caught on overall and several people are deeping their faith or coming to faith for the first time. 3. Refreshment. We worked hard and experienced great images of God through the people, Westray Baptist Church, CE Camp and their leaders, and through the beauty of the landscape in the Orkney Islands. We were refreshed by this experience of God's mighty power! In any trip there is time for orientation: what to expect and plan for before going. Then there is disorientation when you run at a breakneck pace to catch planes, taxis and ferry's in order to reach your destination. After arriving in a strange and different place and tempo... and experiencing disorientation, there comes the return home and the requirement for reorientation. We need to reorient ourselves into our common homeplace but with new insights learned from our trip. We're working on the latter part of this experience. Thanks to all who made this trip and make this sister church relationship possible with the wonderful congregation of Westray Baptist Kirk! God bless, Steve

Kirkwall again!

We traveled to Kirkwall today and had a marvelous day, topped off by Andy Murray beating Tsonga to get to the Wimbledon finals on Sunday! It would be great to be in London on Sunday when Murray wins being the first person from UK to win since 1937! We're now off to a concert of Gospel music started off by our own Michael Harcus! Daynette Orr will sing back up for him when he is in New Bern the first weekend of November! We couldn't be having a more blessed trip than we have and are! God is so good!

We had our camp conclusion tonight with a full house of parents, kids and visitors from Westray! It was a huge success! Our team bonded well with the children and that meant the most to me. All the leadership of the camp felt that our Bible teaching and relationship with the kids was blessed by God! Praise God! I personally could not be prouder of the team than I am right now! Every one of them, Steve and Kimsey, Daynette, Helen and Mary all contributed uniquely to the overall witness of Gods love in Jesus Christ! Tomorrow, if the weather is agreeable, we will go out on a church members boat (John Drever). I am praying for great weather. We will motor over to Papa Westray and around the islands. It should afford some great pictures, close up encounters with the seals and maybe a view of an Orca in the water, if we're lucky! This has been a worthy investment in God's kingdom work by our church. I look forward to aging our team share with you on a Wednesday night after returning! God bless, Steve

Today is the final day of our work with the CE Camp children. It has gone well and, as expected, we have bonded well with the children and it will break our hearts to leave them! Most of them are very quiet, shy and reserved (an Orkney Island trait we are told), but once they get to know you they open up and are incredibly loving! I have found that I cannot upload pictures onto the blog from my IPad, so I will use Daynettes computer to load soe pictures of the CE Camp events and the children, leaders and the Kirk (church). We have been blessed with good weather and have done almost all of the things we wanted to do around the island during good weather (never warmer than upper 50's). We have slept well even though it's only fairly dark for about three hours! More to come and again, if you want to see pic's, visit my Facebook page! Cheerio!

What a great start to our time with the children. Mr "Steve" has touched the hearts of the children and our Bible theme of helping the kids know who, where and what they are in God's eyes is going well! The music being led by Daynette is awesome! You need to request me as your Facebook friend to see great videos and pictures! We took a wonderful walk today along the western side of Westray!

Last night we met at the island schoolhouse for a community event and fundraiser for the lifeboats (lifeboats are completely funded by donation only). Teenagers played Celtic and original Scottish music! I will upload a sample onto my Facebook page when possible! This was a high moment in all of my travels to Scotland, Ireland and England! Today we gathered for worship together at the Kirk at 11:30 a.m. The pastor, Gavin Hunter, speaks lovingly and authentically straight from the heart. Michael and Teenie Harcus allowed Daynette to assist in all of the worship music and then Daynette sang a solo, He Knows My Name, just before I preached. The worship today included the other church on Westray, The Church of Scotland. Attendance was spectacular and there was great fellowship afterwards! We now go to meet with the director of CE (Christian Endeavor) and plan out the kickoff for this weeks thematic Bible focus!

6/30/12:  we all slept in different homes last night and everyone was tired! We ate a fantastic meal with Linda and Kirsty Hagan at their home on Skail! I stayed with Michael and Teenie Harcus and we went and viewed the completely refurbished Kirk (church). Then we went for a sunset walk at 10:30 on a beautiful night! I slept from 11p.m. Until 8:00 am like a baby!  Had a wonderful breakfast with Michael, Teenie and Peter (a cousin who is sailing down from Shetland to Aberdeen but enjoying a stay here waiting for right weather).  Then we saw Steve Wynn and Kimsey Welch walking past the house and I went and collected them. After some chat at the house we went up to the lighthouse and walked along the cliffs, saw many seals, birds, but no puffins (they were out feeding). At table for lunch after buying seafood at local market!

Scotland Mission Trip 6/29/12: flight from RDU to Heathrow was on a small 767. There were no seat-back DVD screens and I sat apart from group since Daynette Orr's name change messed up seat assignments. My seat mate was Mike Gerber and he was going to meet his family in Paris (a fine Christian man origannly from Illinois and now a manager in a construction type insurance company)!  The real ordeal came at Heathrow! The que to get through customs and collect baggage had literally hundreds of people and an estimated two hour time. I asked an airport worker what we should do since we were to fly out of Gatwick at 11:20 and he just said to forget it... "it's a two hour drive to the other side of London and even if we had our luggage we couldn't make it!" a few minutes later I asked the same question of a lady in charge of " the fast track" lane. After a few minutes she let our group through, we walked FOREVER tp the Central Bus and Train station, I bought 6 tickets for 150 pounds, and we were told that we had 4 minutes to catch bus #15 to Gatwick and we should make it to Gatwick by 10 a.m. We hustled to find bus #15 and when we did the driver didn't want to let us on? Another driver argued with him and then he took us! We made the connection from Gatwick to Edinburg... But then upon arrival realized that we had no boarding passes through to Kirkwall... So the kind lady with British Air shot us directly to our departure gate for Kirkwall where two agents hand wrote boarding passes for us. Kimsey and I were moved to the two front seats to "balance the plane" and enjoyed the company of Rachel, the flight attendant from Glasgow. Upon arrival in Kirkwall we were told that we only had 10 minutes to get to the Westray Ferry.... Made that and are on route now at 5:22 p.m. (their time) to Westray with Kirsty Hagan! Whew!!!!!

Well, I went to bed early and was going to sleep in, but can't do it! Up at 6:30 and going to meet my daughter, Katy-Mac for daddy time and breakfast before I leave at noon! Steve Wynn has to be at work this morning by 7 a.m. I think that the rest of the crew will be packing to meet at the church around 11:45 am! Day 1 of journey, here we go!

Our Scotland Mission Team is getting excited as we head out Thursday at noon from RDU directly to Heathrow. However, once arriving at Heathrow, we must change airports and transfer to Gatwick where we will depart to Edinburg and then to Kirkwall where we will collect our luggage and then ferry to Westray! It is an adventure getting to Westray in the Orkney Islands. We are due to arrive in Westray by Friday night around 7 p.m. Please pray for us and I'll blog the experience along the way, where and when possible! The theme of our Bible focus with the 50 - 60 eight to eleven year old children that we will working with is that God knows our name and has us inscribed in the palm of his hand (from Isa. 43, 49 and John 10).

New burial site reveals first century belief in resurrection

New find revives 'Jesus Tomb' flap
By Alan Boyle
April 6, 2012, 7:20 am MSN.com


One of the designs etched on a bone box found within a 1st-century Jerusalem tomb suggests the biblical story of Jonah and the fish, which held significant symbolism for early Christians.






Using a remote-controlled camera on the end of a robotic arm, investigators have found what could be the earliest evidence of a Christian iconography in Jerusalem, engraved on a set of "bone boxes" inside a nearly intact 1st-century tomb.

One of the limestone boxes, known more formally as an ossuary, carries a Greek inscription calling on God to "rise up" or "raise up" someone. Another box appears to show the carved image of a fish, perhaps with the prophet Jonah in its mouth. Allusions to fish and the "sign of Jonah" came to be widely used among early Christians, but not among Jerusalem's Jews.

Update: Doubts raised about the 'Jesus Discovery'

Those discoveries alone would be enough to get biblical scholars excited. But the investigators in this case are the same people who claimed five years ago that ossuaries from a nearby tomb were engraved with the names of the biblical Jesus and his family. They're putting forth this new find as supporting evidence for their earlier claims, and resurrecting the topic in a newly published book ("The Jesus Discovery") as well as a Discovery Channel documentary that's due to air this spring.

"This does reopen the whole question about the 'Jesus Tomb,'" James Tabor, a scriptural scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told me.

That almost guarantees that the link to Jesus will take center stage once again in the discussion of the discovery, with most archaeologists discounting the connection. There's even a chance that the renewed controversy would push this most recent find out of the spotlight. That would be a terrible shame, said John Dominic Crossan, an expert on 1st-century Christianity and former Catholic priest who is a professor emeritus at DePaul University.

"It's a stunning discovery," he said. "It's a stunning piece of technology. As a scholar, I really don't want to get lost in saying, 'Oh, come on, it's off the wall.' Yeah, it's off the wall. But look at the wall!"

James Tabor / UNCC

Engineer Walter Klassen and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici hold the camera-equipped robotic arm in its folded-up configuration.

Or in this case, look at the box.

How the boxes were found
Tabor and documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici located both of the 1st-century tombs — the so-called Jesus Family Tomb as well as the one with the newly revealed inscriptions — in a Jerusalem neighborhood known as Talpiot years ago. They looked into previous claims that the bone boxes in the Jesus Family Tomb were marked with names that meshed with the names of Jesus' brothers and sisters, as mentioned in the Gospels. The investigators went on to cite a statistical analysis of name frequency as evidence that the family interred in the caskets was that of Jesus.

Most provocatively, they pointed to one box that was said to contain the remains of Jesus, and another containing the remains of "Judah, son of Jesus." These claims ran counter to the mainstream Christian view that Jesus made a bodily resurrection after his crucifixion and death, and that he did not marry or have children. To explain the seeming discrepancy with the Gospels, Tabor and his colleagues suggested that early Christians did not necessarily believe in a bodily resurrection, but rather a spiritual resurrection in which Jesus left behind the "old clothes" of the flesh.

The first book ("The Jesus Family Tomb") and TV documentary ("The Lost Tomb of Jesus") set off a wave of protests, with skeptics saying that Tabor and Jacobovici were sensationalizing an unprovable assertion. Despite the criticism, the team continued their work, focusing on the other tomb. This tomb was only briefly examined in 1981 before protests by Orthodox Jews, concerned about the disturbance of a gravesite, forced an end to the archaeological study. The tomb was sealed back up, and a condominium was built over it. Tabor and his colleagues refer to this tomb as the "Patio Tomb," because a patio sits almost directly above the tomb.

Israel's civil and religious authorities were resistant to efforts to reopen the Patio Tomb, so Tabor, Jacobovici and their colleagues came up with an unorthodox alternative: They suggested building a robotic arm that could be extended down vent holes and drill holes into the tomb, to a maximum length of more than 15 feet. The authorities gave their permission, and the documentary team proceeded with their remote-controlled video exploration in June 2010.

James Tabor / UNCC

Investigators shot imagery of the 1st-century Jerusalem tomb and the bone boxes inside the tomb using a robotic arm, as shown in this video frame.

The filmmakers peered into niches cut into the tomb and found several inscribed bone boxes, including one that was left ajar to reveal the bones still within. In one of the niches, two boxes were jammed close together. As the robotic arm maneuvered to look at the side of one of the boxes, one of the investigators cried out, "Wait, wait, stop there!" A design had been etched into the limestone — a design that could be interpreted as a fish with a stick figure hanging out of its mouth.

The meaning of the inscriptions
After consulting with other scriptural experts, the investigators concluded that the etching showed a representation of Jonah and the fish. The biblical tale of the prophet who was swallowed by a giant fish, only to be vomited up alive three days later, had a special resonance for early Christians, who believed in Jesus' resurrection after three days in a tomb. The image of the fish, which would not typically be carved on a Jewish ossuary, suggested to Tabor and his colleagues that this might be the earliest surviving example of a Christian marking on an artifact in Jerusalem.

The team's excitement grew when they saw the inscription on the box sitting next to the one with the fish: A four-line inscription in Greek appeared to refer to a belief in the resurrection. The inscription could be read as "Divine Jehovah, raise up, raise up," or "The Divine Jehovah raises up to the Holy Place," or "Divine Jehovah, raise up [abbreviated name]."

"This inscription has something to do with resurrection of the dead, either of the deceased in the ossuary, or perhaps, given the Jonah image nearby, an expression of faith in Jesus' resurrection," Tabor said in a news release.

The Jesus connection
Tabor and his colleagues tie this latest discovery to their earlier claims by suggesting that the two tombs were part of one complex, which might have been chiseled out by a wealthy supporter of Jesus and his disciples. They even name their prime suspect: Joseph of Arimathea, a high-ranking religious official who was said in the Gospels to have arranged Jesus' burial. In the investigators' view, the fact that they found such a strong connection to early Christianity in the Patio Tomb strengthens their original claims for the Jesus Family Tomb, which is 200 feet away.

"We now have the new archaeological evidence, literally written in stone, that can guide us in properly understanding what Jesus' earliest followers meant by their faith in Jesus' resurrection from the dead — with his earthly remains, and those of his family, peacefully interred just yards away," Tabor and Jacobovici wrote.

Crossan said that was too much of a leap. "There's nothing that associates [the Patio Tomb] with Joseph of Arimathea," he said.

He said the two tombs may well have no relationship to each other: "This whole area is riddled with tombs, as far as we can tell."

Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary, voiced a similar view. "The attempt to connect [the Patio Tomb] to the other tombs is sheer conjecture, unless the tombs were connected," he told me.

Witherington said the connections made in the newly published book were similar to those put forth in Tabor's earlier work. "Most of us who have evaluated his work would say, OK, all very interesting, but it's building one speculation on another speculation," he said.

However, Witherington was intrigued by the fish carving. "We have early Christian ossuaries with the fish symbol ... in the 2nd century, if not back into the 1st century," he said. "That is the early Christian symbol for I-Ch-Th-Y-S ... 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.' What we don't have any evidence for is that symbol on Jewish ossuaries."

The words of the inscription also caught Witherington's interest. "They imply a belief about the resurrection," he said.

It is thought that the use of such bone boxes in Jerusalem ceased in the year 70, due to the Roman destruction of the city. Thus, there's a chance that the residents buried in the Patio Tomb actually lived during the time of Jesus and his first disciples. However, Crossan noted that Christians weren't the only ones in 1st-century Jerusalem who held a religious belief in resurrection. The Pharisees and the Essenes also looked forward to the resurrection of the righteous, he said.

"What I would say is ... this is a rich Pharisee, a rich person in the 1st century who believes in the resurrection," Crossan told me. "We always thought that [the image of] Jonah coming out of the fish was peculiarly Christian. Maybe that's one more thing that the early Christians took from Jewish tradition, and this would be the first evidence."

"Other" languages

One of the clear signs of a Christian, an authentic Christian, is that he or she will speak in "other languages." I remember years ago engaging in conversation with a shopper at a local discount store in Richmond, VA. After hearing that I was a minister, she asked if I "had been baptized by the Spirit yet." I indicated that I indeed had. She then wanted to make sure that I knew that she meant "Was I able to speak in tongues." When I indicated that I did not speak in an "unknown language," she proceeded to relegate my faith experience as incomplete and said, "You'll really be something when God finally gets hold of you!" How arrogant! Any time we select some biblically mentioned gift of the Spirit and then impose it upon God and others as "the greatest of gifts" because it is mine, we are arrogant! Arrogance is not of God; rather it is of the Devil!
In Acts 2:1-13 we read the story of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. All outside the room of believers were amazed that they heard the apostles speaking in their native languages; one's that the apostles clearly did not know only minutes before. Understand that these were unknown languages to the apostles, neither to God nor to some others.
I have come to believe that authentic Christians will indeed be able to speak in other languages accordingly:
1. God's language. Authentic Christians are filled with the Spirit of God, filled with Christ, and therefore see with new eyes and hear with new ears. No longer do we speak from a human self-centered perspective that only deals with I, me, my and mine! We begin to see the beauty and presence of God in all kinds of ordinary experience. We are filled with the desire to allow God’s will to guide our lives along in joy and praise, and in trust and obedience. Authentic Christians speak the language of love of God and love of neighbor, which leads to…
2. Neighbor's language. Authentic Christians develop an innate ability to listen to others -- what they are saying with their tongues, body language and emotions! One who is filled with Christ doesn't need to use other people, or creation for that matter, to fill a void through manipulation of resources -- people and nature!
How are you going to speak in other languages today? Can you speak with God's perspective in the forefront? Can you speak with God to the "other" that will cross your path today? If your words and witness doesn't build up the body of Christ, but instead promotes your own arrogant agenda, then your faith should be called into question!
Spend time in the Bible, in prayer and listen before you speak. Consider James 1:19
Know this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;" (ESV)
Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. (MSG)

Green Board

Lord, I saw a weather person standing before a blank green board explaining the weather on a map not visible to her. But the image is produced elsewhere and injected onto the screen that we view. Is this not similar to showing you to others. To the lost all they see is a blank green board that we claim shows your presence. But to those who follow You, your image is injected onto the screen of their experience by the power of your Holy Spirit. It really isn't there to the lost! They are indeed right! But to those who follow Jesus, it's not just a blank green board that we stand before. We stand in trust and faith that you, the Producer, reveal an accurate image of reality and life. It is our job to follow and point. It is your job to reveal and show! Thanks be to God!
In Christ,
Amen